MILLINOCKET, Maine (AP) – The Finance Authority of Maine has approved a $25 million loan guarantee for a company planning to launch an operation to produce biomass-based, coal-like wood pellets.
Officials said Thursday that with the loan guarantee, Thermogen Industries is one step closer to launching an operation in Millinocket to manufacture what’s known as torrefied wood. Thermogen is a subsidiary of Portmouth, N.H.-based Cate Street Capital, which acquired two idle paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket in 2011.

Torrefied wood is turned into wood pellets that would be shipped primarily overseas as an alternative cleaner-burning fuel for coal-fired power plants.

Thermogen says the $70 million operation would be located in what is now a shuttered paper mill in Millinocket. It could be operating by the end of 2014, initially with 36 jobs.